After nearly 20 years behind bars in a Chinese prison, Chinese-American pastor David Lin is back home in the United States.
According to a CBS News report, the 68-year-old Lin was freed by Beijing after he spent nearly 20 years in prison in a case the U.S. government and his family have always dismissed as baseless.
Back in 2006, Lin entered China and attempted to establish a Christian training center in Beijing.
China’s Communist Party disapproves of such activities and routinely roots out underground Christian churches, seeing them as a threat to its power. Only officially-sanctioned, closely monitored churches are permitted under the Communist Party’s rule, this according to the CBS report.
Lin was detained the same year he arrived, then in 2009 he was handed a life sentence after being convicted of fraud. The charge is often applied to home church leaders who try to raise money for expansion, according to the Dui Hua Foundation human rights group.
The U.S. State Department confirmed Lin’s release on Sunday.
The Chinese government did not make any public comment on Lin’s release during the long holiday weekend.
The Bring Our Families Home campaign group posted a message attributed to Lin’s daughter Alice on social media in April, in which she was quoted as saying that she had been diagnosed with cancer and “we don’t know how much time either of us has left,” given her father’s age, and adding: “We can’t afford to wait.”
"We don't know how much time either of us has left. [My father's] sentence was reduced to 24 years, but he is elderly now, and I have cancer. We can't afford to wait."
Alice Lin on her dad, David Lin, the "forgotten U.S. citizen" detained since 2006.https://t.co/7flRWe0yTC pic.twitter.com/9z3YOwcfNO
— Bring Our Families Home Campaign (@BOFHcampaign) April 19, 2024
While Lin was in detention, he missed his daughter Alice’s wedding and the birth of his grandson. In April, she wrote a letter, published by the Wall Street Journal, saying she dreamed of her father “meeting my husband and my 8-year-old son for the first time.”
“No words can express the joy we have,” Alice was quoted as saying by Politico on Sunday. “We have a lot of time to make up for.”
Lin’s release came nearly three weeks after a visit to Beijing by U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in late August, when he met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Despite Lin’s release, more than 200 other U.S. nationals are still being held in China, according to the Dui Hua Foundation.